Sunday 14 July 2019

"Siege of Jerusalem by Titus"



Four charméd Spirits of Vengeance here
   Impatient wait
By hour, by day, by month, by year—
   They watch yon gate
No measure of time so small as to relax
   Their Ward,
Nor long enough t'exhaust or weary out
   Their guard.

In 1802 Coleridge wrote to Tom Wedgwood:
Dear sir, indulge me with looking still further on in my literary life. I have, since my twentieth year, meditated an heroic poem on the ‘Siege of Jerusalem’ by Titus. This is the pride and the stronghold of my hope, but I never think of it except in my best moods. The work to which I dedicate the ensuing years of my life is one which highly pleased Leslie, in prospective. [20 Oct 1802; CL 2:876]
This epic never got itself written, of course, despite STCs earnest dedication here. ‘Leslie’ is the Edinburgh scientist and professor John Leslie (the first man to produce artificial ice by using an air pump to freeze water) who had been Tom Wedgwood's tutor at the family home, 1791-2, and with whom Coleridge had, evidently, been in communication, although no letters between the two men—if any were written—survive.

This idea kept returning to Coleridge through his writing life, although in increasingly ubi sunt mode. In 1820 he wrote to Thomas Allsop: ‘alas! for the proud times when I planned, when I had present to my mind the materials as well as the Scheme of ... the Epic Poem on what still appears to me the one only fit subject remaining for an Epic Poem, Jerusalem beseiged & destroyed by Titus’ [20 Mar 1820; CL 4:28]. And here he is near the end of his life:
The destruction of Jerusalem is the only subject now remaining for an Epic Poem—a subject which should interest all Christendom, as the Fall of Man, or as the War of Troy did all Greece. There would be difficulties—as there are in all subjects—and they must be mitigated, palliated and thrown into the shade, as Milton has done with the numerous ones in the Paradise Lost; but there would be a greater assemblage of grandeur and splendor than can now be found in any other theme. As for the old Mythology—incredulus odi; and yet there must be a mythology for an epic poem; here there would be the completion of the prophecies—the termination of the first revealed national religion under the violence of Paganism as the immediate forerunner and condition of the spread of a revealed mundane religion; the character of the Roman and the Jew, the awfulness, the completeness, the justice. No materials would be wanted beyond the Bible, Josephus, Philo-Judaeus and the Zelotae. I schemed it at twenty-five—but alas! it was a scheme only for me! Venturum expectat. [Table Talk 24 April 1832; CC 14:289]
I suppose ‘it was a scheme only for me’ means ‘a scheme is all it ever was, for me’: it never got beyond the stage of my scheme to become an actual poem. Venturum expectat means ‘it awaits one who is yet to come’. The following year he was less sanguine:
I have already told you that in my opinion the Destruction of Jerusalem is the only subject for an Epic poem now left—yet with all its great capabilities, it has this one insurmountable defect—that whereas a poem, to be epic, must have a personal interest, in this subject no skill or genius could possibly preserve the interest for a hero from being merged in the interest for the Event. The fact is, the Event is too sublime and overwhelming. [Table Talk 2 Sept 1833; CC 14:441]
What interests me is this: what might this poem have looked like, if it had ever been written?

There are hints as to how Coleridge might have developed this idea. One we can glean from his reading of, and marginalia upon, a commentary upon the Revelation of St John by the German theologian Johann Gottfried Eichhorn: Commentarius in apocalypsin Joannis (1791). Eichhorn's is a work which reads Revelation as (in George Whalley's words) ‘a poetic and obscurely symbolic representation of the triumph of Christianity over Judaism: ACT 1, the Fall of Jerusalem; ACT II, the fall of Rome or the victory of the Christians over the Gentiles; ACT III the Heavenly Jerusalem.’ Coleridge's annotations date from some time between 1817 and 1822. So, Eichhorn glosses the following passage (as a for-instance) as being a poetical version of Titus's sacking of Rome:
13 And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God,
14 Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.
15 And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.
16 And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.
17 And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.
18 By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.
19 For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt. [Revelation 9:13-19]
Coleridge follows him down this peculiar rabbit hole. Why do these horses have mouths in their heads and their tails?
It appears, I own, somewhat fanciful; but I cannot frown away the suggestion that the power being in the Mouths, and even the Tails having Mouths, is meant to express the fact that the great superiority of the Roman Armies over the Zelotae and other Fanatics of Judaea & Jersualem (the Scorpion-Locusts) consisted not in Courage or Warlike Skill; but in admirable Officering even of the lowest portions of the Forces brought by Vespasian & Titus—
It was the Discipline—the Voice—the Word of Command—
Hmm. A little earlier, Coleridge scribbles a gloss upon Eichhorn's gloss of  the Johannine ‘four angels were loosed which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year’.
Most poetic & vivid they are—. See Ode on the Departing Year, and the Personification of Destruction, with lidless dragon eyes Dreaming on the marge of a Volcano of the predestined prey—the Fiend-hag on her perilous Couch doth leap Muttering distempered Triumph in her charmed Sleep. So here—the four Spirits of Vengeance
     Impatient waiting with unsleeping
to By hour, by day, by month, by year—

No measure of time so small as to relax their Ward, None long enough to exhaust & weary out/  [Marginalia, CC 12.2 515]
This looks to me like STC starting to block out poetry for Titus's Siege of Jerusalem: as it might be
Four charméd Spirits of Vengeance here
   Impatient wait
By hour, by day, by month, by year—
   They watch yon gate
No measure of time so small as to relax
   Their Ward,
Nor long enough t'exhaust or weary out
   Their guard.
and so on. The bit of his own ‘Ode on the Departing Year’ (1791) to which he is here referring is this one (lines 140-48):
The nations curse thee. They with eager wondering
Shall hear Destruction, like a vulture, scream!
Strange-eyed Destruction! who with many a dream
Of central fires through neither seas upthundering
Soothes her fierce solitude; yet as she lies
By livid fount, or red volcanic stream,
If ever to her lidless dragon-eyes,
O Albion! thy predestined ruins rise,
The fiend-hag on her perilous couch doth leap,
Muttering distempered triumph in her charmed sleep. 
What about the detail that the the four angels, or Spirits of Vengeance are ‘bound in the great river Euphrates’ [Rev 9:14]? Eichhorn comments:
Qui carceris locus soli debetur poetae ingenio, nullamque patitur ex historia excidii Hierosolymitani interpretationem. Poesis enim prophetica postulat, ut singula in carmine declaranda ad loca certa personasque certas. revocentur. Quid? quod nee Romanus exercitus, ad Judaos coercendos ab Euphrate progressos dici poterat; is enim ex Achaia profectus Alexandriam petiit et legionibus Ptolemaidis et Caesreae auctus in Judeam irrupit, vid. Josephus de bello Judaico lib 3. C. 1. 3.
This location for imprisonment is merely the fancy of the poet; it permits no interpretation that relates to the actual destruction of Jerusalem. For indeed, poetic prophesy is premised on the idea that each thing mentioned in the poem must relate to specific places and specific people. What follows? The Roman army might be said to have advanced on and surrounded the Jews from the Euphrates; after all, it had set off from Achaia, travelled to Alexandria, and reinforced by the legions of Ptolemais and of Caesara, had invaded Judea (See Josephus Jewish War, 3:1.3.) [Eichhorn
Commentarius in apocalypsin Joannis (1791), 2:35]
Coleridge is unimpressed by this Eichhornian literalism.
P.35. I wonder at this assertion from so acute and ingenious a Man as Eichhorn. First, as I have noted—if Rome was to be symbolized as Babylon, the River must be the Euphrates. But that the four mighty Destroyers were bound up [in] the great River—‘up a great River, great as any Sea’ [Osorio IV:232] is according to the code of popular Beliefs—the bad Spirits are sent bound to the bottom of the Red SEA—. But a Sea would not have been appropriate or designative of the Roman Power—while the Tyber was a perfect Synonime of Rome, and the trite poetic Exponent of the Roman Power—Now the Tyber could not but be changed into the Euphrates ... Four giant Daemons could not be imagined bound or chained up in a vast City—this would have been too indefinite—But neither in any Dungeon or Tower in the Babylon—this would have been as much too narrow, & besides too gross an outrage to probability, & above all too little ghostliness/—With great Judgement therefore the sublime Seer transfers their prison to the River but amplifies the River into all the magnificence of a Sea for the Imagination of the Readers. Only read the Greek words aloud [‘τοὺς τέσσαρας ἀγγέλους τοὺς δεδεμένους ἐπὶ τῷ ποταμῷ τῷ μεγάλῳ Εὐφράτῃ’] ore rotundo and you will feel the effect—Add to all this the Hebrew Associations with the Euphrates—Captivity after bloody Wars, and the Seige, Sack and utter Destruction of their Chief City & Temple! Is it not, I say again, striking that Eichhorn should overlook all these so striking and exquisite properties in a “soli debetur poetae ingenio”!!—
[Marginalia, CC 12.2 512]
In his ‘Kubla Khan’ and the Fall of Jerusalem: The Mythological School in Biblical Criticism and Secular Literature (Cambridge 1975), E. S. Shaffer quotes this passage ‘as characteristic of the symbolism of Kubla’.
First, the three great sacred cities—Jerusalem, Babylon and Rome—are blended; the symbolism is not sequential, as in Eichhorn’s scheme, but simultaneous. Because Rome too must fall, and the city of wickedness is Babylon, the captive demons in Jerusalem may be imprisoned in ‘the Euphrates’ … the references are interchangeable, they flow in and out of each other. Geographical mobility is uncannily combined with exact location, timelessness with precise and known history. The superimposition and blending of meaning is perfect. Especially characteristic of Kubla is the way the river expands at a touch into a sea—size as immaterial as place and time—while retaining all the connotations of that particular named river and acquiring all those of the sea.’ [Shaffer, 101]
This would be more convincing if it weren't so anachronistic, shifting comments STC wrote 1817-22 back in time so they can inform the writing of ‘Kubla Khan’. Although having said that, and as I argued in this earlier post, I can well believe (though Shaffer doesn't say anything about this) that STC was reading Josephus with enough attention for this passage describing the old Temple at Jerusalem as both a sunlit golden eminence and a mountain of snow to have stuck in his poetic inspiration, and to have informed his automatic-writing account of Kubla's Xanadian pleasure dome (‘that sunny dome! those caves of ice!’):
Τὸ δ' ἔξωθεν αὐτοῦ πρόσωπον οὐδὲν οὔτ' εἰς ψυχῆς οὔτ' εἰς ὀμμάτων ἔκπληξιν ἀπέλειπεν: πλαξὶ γὰρ χρυσοῦ στιβαραῖς κεκαλυμμένος πάντοθεν ὑπὸ τὰς πρώτας ἀνατολὰς πυρωδεστάτην ἀπέπαλλεν αὐγὴν καὶ τῶν βιαζομένων ἰδεῖν τὰς ὄψεις ὥσπερ ἡλιακαῖς ἀκτῖσιν ἀπέστρεφεν. τοῖς γε μὴν ἀφικνουμένοις ξένοις πόῤῥωθεν ὅμοιος ὄρει χιόνος πλήρει κατεφαίνετο: καὶ γὰρ καθὰ μὴ κεχρύσωτο λευκότατος ἦν.

Now the outward face of the temple in its front wanted nothing that was likely to surprise either men's minds or their eyes; for it was covered all over with plates of gold of great weight, and, at the first rising of the sun, reflected back a very fiery splendour, and made those who forced themselves to look upon it to turn their eyes away, just as they would have done at the sun's own rays. But this temple appeared to strangers, when they were coming to it at a distance, like a mountain covered with snow; for as to those parts of it that were not gilt, they were exceeding white. [Josephus, Jewish War, 5.5.6]
So we might want to argue that, amongst the many other things we can say of ‘Kubla Khan’, it's a kind of dry-run for Coleridge's Siege of Jerusalem by Titus.

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